Small boys ran up to his side, and with white men came the Eskimo,
grinning and shaking his hands. Word traveled swiftly that Alan Holt had
come back from the States. Before the day was over, it was on its way to
Shelton and Candle and Keewalik and Kotzebue Sound. Such was the
beginning of his home-coming. But ahead of the news of his arrival Alan
walked up Front Street, stopped at Bahlke's restaurant for a cup of
coffee, and then dropped casually into Lomen's offices in the Tin
Bank Building.
For a week Alan remained in Nome. Carl Lomen had arrived a few days
before, and his brothers were "in" from the big ranges over on the
Choris Peninsula. It had been a good winter and promised to be a
tremendously successful summer. The Lomen herds would exceed forty
thousand head, when the final figures were in. A hundred other herds
were prospering, and the Eskimo and Lapps were full-cheeked and plump
with good feeding and prosperity. A third of a million reindeer were on
the hoof in Alaska, and the breeders were exultant. Pretty good, when
compared with the fact that in 1902 there were less than five thousand!
In another twenty years there would be ten million.
But with this prosperity of the present and still greater promise for
the future Alan sensed the undercurrent of unrest and suspicion in Nome.
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